Page 170 of A Highland Bride Reclaimed
Frederick’s thumb moved lightly over Iona’s knuckles. “If ye want it,” he said, “this land will be theirs. And yers. Houses.Gardens. A school if enough bairns gather to make one necessary. A place where nay woman needs to explain too much before being believed.”
Iona looked beyond him then, over the open ground and the loch and the trees and the broad, waiting quiet of it all. She could see it suddenly, not as empty land but as it might become. Smoke rising from several hearths. Women walking paths with baskets on their arms and no fear at their backs. Children running where Jamie now ran, careless and loud and safe enough to be both. Not a hiding place. A beginning.
When she looked back at Frederick, she could not seem to fit all she felt into words. So she kissed him.
It was not a grand kiss. But it held within it the sense of being seen not only for what had been done to her, but for what she had done in return. Frederick kissed her back with the same quiet certainty that had steadied her since the worst night of her life finally ended.
When they parted, Jamie sighed happily beside them. “That looked like a pleased kiss,” she said.
Ariella laughed aloud. Maxwell, holding the babe against his shoulder, shook his head as though the entire family had become impossible at once. Even Lennox smiled, though briefly and as if by accident.
Iona wiped at her face and laughed through the last of her tears.
And when she looked once more over the land that would soon become something living and safe and full of women who had thought themselves lost, she understood that what remained now was building the life that was finally worth staying for.
The End?
